TinEye

What is TinEye?

TinEye is the original reverse image search engine. Drop in a picture or paste a URL, and it finds copies across an index of more than seventy billion images. Matching works on the image itself, so cropped, resized, and colour-shifted versions still turn up. Alerts and commercial APIs extend the free tool.

Top Features:

• Modified image matching: cropped, resized, and recoloured copies appear alongside exact duplicates.
• Image alerts: ongoing monitoring emails you when a tracked picture appears online.
• Commercial APIs: search and MatchEngine endpoints bring the technology into your systems.

Use Cases:

• Copyright enforcement: find sites using your photography without licence or credit.
• Fact checking: trace a viral picture back to its earliest known publication.
• Brand monitoring: spot counterfeit listings reusing your official product photography online.

Who Can Use TinEye?

• Photographers and illustrators: creators tracking unlicensed reuse of their work across websites.
• Journalists: reporters verifying images before publishing stories or eyewitness material.
• Brand protection teams: staff hunting counterfeit sellers and trademark misuse on marketplaces.

Pricing

• Web search (free): unlimited manual reverse searches in the browser without an account.
• Starter API ($200): five thousand searches priced at four cents per lookup.
• Enterprise API ($10,000): one million searches priced at one cent per lookup.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Very large index: more than seventy billion images give strong historical coverage.
• Finds edited copies: results include versions that were cropped, flipped, or recoloured.
• Free for manual use: browser searches cost nothing and need no registration.

Cons:

• No face search: the engine matches images rather than identifying individual people.
• API costs add up: automated workflows get expensive at higher monthly search volumes.
• Dated interface: the web experience looks plain next to newer search tools.

FAQs:

1) Is TinEye free?

Yes, manual reverse image searches in the browser are unlimited.

2) How many images are indexed?

The index covers more than seventy billion images from the public web.

3) Can it find edited versions?

Yes, cropped, resized, and colour-changed copies still appear in results.

4) Does TinEye search faces?

No, it matches whole images rather than identifying individual people.

5) What does API access cost?

Bundles start at two hundred dollars, dropping to a cent per search.